rm of assurance, that a request of the kind
will be granted?' he said.

'She has but to call me to her,' said Victor, stiffening his back.

CHAPTER XX. THE GREAT ASSEMBLY AT LAKELANDS

Round the neighbourhood of Lakelands it was known that the day of the
great gathering there had been authoritatively foretold as fine, by
Mr. Victor Radnor; and he delivered his prophecy in the teeth of
the South-western gale familiar to our yachting month; and he really
inspired belief or a kind of trust; some supposing him to draw from
reserves of observation, some choosing to confide in the singularly
winged sparkle of his eyes. Lady Rodwell Blachington did; and young Mrs.
Blathenoy; and Mrs. Fanning; they were enamoured of it. And when women
stand for Hope, and any worshipped man for Promise, nothing less than
redoubled confusion of him dissolves the union. Even then they cling to
it, under an ejaculation, that it might and should have been otherwise;
fancy partly has it otherwise, in her caerulean home above the weeping.
So it is good at all points to prophecy with the aspect of the radiant
day foretold.

A storm, bearing battle overhead, tore the night to pieces. Nataly's
faith in the pleasant prognostic wavered beneath the crashes. She had
not much power of heart to desire anything save that which her bosom
disavowed. Uproar rather appeased her, calmness agitated. She wished
her beloved to be spared from a disappointment, thinking he deserved all
successes, because of the rigours inflicted by her present tonelessness
of blood and being. Her unresponsive manner with him was not due to lack
of fire in the blood or a loss of tenderness. The tender feeling, under
privations unwillingly imposed, though willingly shared, now suffused
her reflections, owing to a gratitude induced by a novel experience of
him; known, as it may chance, and as it does not always chance, to both
sexes in wedded intimacy here and there; known to women whose mates are
proved quick to compliance with delicate intuitions of their moods of
nature. A constant, almost visible, image of the dark thing she desired,
and was bound not to desire, and was remorseful for desiring, oppressed
her; a perpetual consequent warfare of her spirit and the nature subject
to the thousand sensational hypocrisies invoked for concealment of its
reviled brutish baseness, held the woman suspended from her emotions.
She coldly felt that a caress would have melted her, would have